For a variety of reasons, Internet service providers are moving from current, fixed-rate, all-you-can-use Internet access billing plans to more complex billing plans. These new plans charge by metrics, such as volume of data transferred, bandwidth utilized, service used, time-of-day, and subscriber class. An example of such a rate structure might include a fixed monthly rate portion, a usage allocation to be included as part of the fixed monthly rate (a threshold), plus a variable rate portion for usage beyond the allocation (or threshold). For a given service provider there will be many such rate structures for the many possible combinations of services and subscriber classes.
Many systems have been developed to enable service providers to measure usage of their networks by subscribers. These systems must precisely measure the subscriber's use of the service provider's network to enable accurate billing. The billing data that is generated in this process may be voluminous. However, since the data is used to prepare bills for prompt payment, the billing data does not need to be stored for a long period of time. Rather, typically, the data is stored for a period of no more than several months. This need can be met with relatively small data storage capacity in the service provider's system.
Network usage analysis is another emerging field that monitors usage patterns of subscribers to assist service providers in meeting their subscribers' needs. Systems for network analysis provide information about how a service provider's services are being used and by whom. This is vital business information that a service provider can use to identify fast-moving trends, to establish competitive prices, and to define new services or subscriber classes as needed.
Many systems have been developed to extract these trends for service providers based on raw usage data. These systems typically focus on statistical analysis of usage data for the subscribers on a service provider's network. Thus, to accurately identify trends, these systems typically draw on data that covers a longer period of time compared to the data used for billing functions. This data is also typically maintained for longer periods of time than required for billing purposes. This need for accurate identification of trends in subscriber usage, thus, leads to service providers warehousing large volumes of usage data for long periods of time.
Usage-based billing and network analysis systems begin with the same raw usage data. However, due to differences in function, the data is handled in dramatically different ways. Service providers that implement both usage-based billing and network analysis conventionally store large quantities of data for long periods of time thus requiring extensive data storage systems. This can be a very expensive undertaking for network service providers.